The current exhibition in London explores the arts and culture of the Mughal period through the artistic achievements of the ‘Golden Age’ of the Mughal court, circa 1560-1660, during the reigns of three emperors: Akbar (r 1556-1606), Jahangir (r 1605-1627), and Shah Jahan (r 1628-1658). It highlights the international nature of the arts during this period with inspiration coming from Hindustan, Iran, as well as from the West.
When Babur (r 1526-1530), the grandfather of Emperor Akbar, first set foot on the Indian subcontinent in 1519, it marked the beginning of the long period of Mughal rule over large parts of North India. Babur was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan through his maternal line and a descendant of Timur through his father. The dynasty proudly claimed this ancestry to the Timurid dynasty and used it to emphasise their power, bringing prosperity and immense wealth to the land they conquered. This prosperity was partly generated by the country’s many natural resources, which also enabled them to be great patrons of the arts. The dynasty created imperial workshops to produce paintings, jewellery, and luxury objects, as well to construct magnificent buildings such as the Taj Mahal in Agra.
Due to extensive commerce with the Western world during the 16th and 17th centuries, India became an important centre for the trade of all manner of goods considered luxurious in the West, including gemstones and other precious materials. During this period, the Mughal rulers created a demand for gems and jewellery for the Mughal court, using diamonds from Golconda, rubies from Burma, sapphires from Ceylon, emeralds from Colombia, pearls from the Gulf of Mannar and Basra, and jade from Khotan. The desire for extraordinary gemstones and jewels extended beyond material avarice for the Mughal rulers, it was also a manifestation of their power and control of the empire. This opulence was also expressed in their taste for clothes, architecture, books, and art.
The V&A’s exhibition looks at these luxurious objects created during the golden age of the Mughals by dividing the show into three sections representing the reign of each emperor. Objects are displayed chronologically with a particular focus on the craftsmanship, arts, and creative outputs of the courts during the three reigns. Over 200 objects are on display, including rarely shown paintings, illustrated manuscripts, drawings, carpets, textiles, architectural pieces, metal work, cabinets, other objets d’art and precious stones. International loans include four rare folios from the colourfully illustrated volumes of the Hamza-Nama (Book of Hamza) commissioned by Akbar in 1570, on loan from the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, and the ‘Ames Carpet’, circa 1590-1600, a woven carpet from the imperial workshops, on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and on display in the UK for the first time.
Akbar established new imperial workshops to manufacture these luxurious goods for the court, the most famous of which was the House of Books (Ketab-khana), where manuscripts were both made and stored. In the early phase of court painting, émigré Persian artists led the way, recruiting and instructing local painters and supervising the execution of the first major illumination projects.
Mughal painting was not simply a continuation of the Safavid tradition – India already had a centuries-old tradition of Buddhist and Jain illuminated manuscripts, patronised by the sultan rulers who preceded the Mughals. These earlier works also played a role in the evolution of the new Mughal painting style. During Akbar’s reign, alongside traditional Persian literature and poetry, a large volume of new texts was translated into Persian and richly illustrated by court artists. These texts, including collections of fables, Hindu texts, such as the Ramayana, and even stories of the life of Christ, testify to the open-mindedness of the Mughal rulers. In the 1580s and 1590s, Akbar’s Translation Office made Persian versions of a wide variety of texts with the illustrations accompanying the text in the contemporary Mughal style, which are very different from the earlier traditions of Indian painting in which Akbar’s predominantly Hindu artists would have been trained.
In his mission to expand the empire, Akbar conquered the wealthy province of Gujarat in 1573. The conquest of the region added significantly to the Mughal economy – and importantly, it provided access to the sea and maritime trade routes. The Akbar-Nama (Book of Akbar) gives a detailed account of this major victory and the key battles. It also includes a description of the emperor’s first significant encounter with Europeans in Surat. By the early 1600s, Europeans would have been an increasingly familiar sight in the major cities of the empires. One miniature in the exhibition depicts a portrait of a European from the early 1600s, circa 1610-20, although his attire is from a much earlier period than the painting, suggesting the artist copied an image rather than executing the painting from real life. Gujarat had been producing distinctive luxury products, characteristically inlaying wood with mother-of-pearl or ivory in intricate floral patterns long before the start of the Mughal period. In the exhibition, there is a fall-front inlaid cabinet, circa 1600, and a ewer completely covered in mother-of-pearl, circa 1600-25. In Ahmadabad, craftsmen specialised in making objects entirely covered with mother-of-pearl, as can be seen on the ewer in the exhibition. These luxury objects were not only exported to the Mughal court, but also abroad to satisfy the growing demand for ‘oriental’ objects in the West. Similar items, but of a lower quality, were made in workshops in Khambhat, Surat, and neighbouring Sindh for a wider market.
Jahangir shared an interest with his father, Akbar, in the art of the book. Artists from the Imperial House of Books worked for both emperors, and the younger artists continued in Jahangir’s service, ensuring a continuance of style. On show in the exhibition are two miniatures by the court painter Mansur. The first depicts a turkey cock, which is described in the Jahangir-nama (Book of Jahangir). In 1612, a consignment of exotic birds and animals arrived at the Mughal court from Goa, sent by a trusted servant of Jahangir to buy rarities of all kinds from the Portuguese.
Mansur received the highest accolade from Jahangir, the title of Nadir al-Asr (Wonder of the Age), for his ability to paint and preserve the likenesses of the flora and fauna that engaged the emperor’s attention. By studying the natural world, Jahangir was continuing a tradition begun by his great-grandfather, Babur, whose Babur-nama (Book of Babur) has a section devoted to the subject. His work shows a deep empathy with the subject matter, and he regularly accompanied the emperor on his journeys across the empire, witnessing and recording the subject matter first- hand. A second miniature, a portrait of a zebra, is also included in the exhibition. Jahangir wrote in his memoirs that this zebra was given to him in March 1621, at Nawruz (New Year), and that he ordered a court painting to depict it. The writing on the right of the miniature, in the emperor’s hand, records that the artist was Mansur, and that the animal was brought from Ethiopia by Turks who accompanied the Mughal courtier Mir Ja’far on his mission.
The arts continued to flourish under Jahangir as new materials and techniques associated with the decorative arts came into fashion. Jade imported from Khotan was made into vessels, and Jahangir’s jade wine cup, decorated with calligraphy and dated AH1016 (1608), is featured in the exhibition. The cup is the earliest known dated Mughal jade. It was almost certainly made by Sa’ida Gilani, the Iranian supervisor of the imperial goldsmiths’ department, who was renowned for his skill in making jade vessels.
Jewellery also came to the fore during this period. The technique of enamelling became one of the greatest arts of the Mughals. Beyond the imperial workshops, luxury industries in centres across the empire also supplied the royal family and court. Skilled Persian craftsmen came to the Mughal court to establish the imperial workshops and produce jewellery of the highest quality for the emperors. Kundan is quintessentially an Indian technique where layers of narrow gold ribbons are wedged around a gemstone. However, enamelling was not indigenous to India, it came from the Roman world via Byzantium to the Islamic world and was probably learnt from European goldsmiths, perhaps in Goa, to the Mughal courts. Akbar had sent an embassy to Goa in 1601, and he had ordered its members to invite skilled European craftsmen to work at the Mughal court. By the reign of Jahangir, enamelling on gold and silver was well established and widely used.
The third section of the exhibition is devoted to Shah Jahan, probably the most famous Mughal emperor in the West, best known for creating the Taj Mahal. It was during his reign that sumptuous artistic production, combined with a unified approach to style, culminated in the archetype of Mughal decorative arts.
The vast wealth accumulated in the imperial treasuries allowed Shah Jahan to pursue his passion for architecture and to commission extravagant jewellery, and other objects such as jewelled dagger and sword hilts. The harmony in design was partly shaped by the process of creating the Taj Mahal, the mausoleum built by the emperor for his late wife Arjumand Begum (1593-1631), also known as Mumtaz Mahal, the chief consort of the emperor. Susan Stronge writes in the catalogue, ‘The mausoleum follows many established aspects of Mughal architecture deriving from Timurid-Iranian tradition. At the same time it codifies principles and designs that would shape the work of artists and craftsmen in imperial workshops across the empire for the rest of the reign. The flowering plants carved on the walls of the mausoleum and its gateways would be repeated on all the major metropolitan monuments of Shah Jahan’s reign and influence almost everything produced in the imperial workshops, in all media’.
Shah Jahan’s craftsmen adopted some floral motifs from earlier reigns, combining Safavid conventions with stylised forms taken from Hindustani traditions. Artists working for Shah Jahan adapted these motifs and added flower-filled vases copied from Western prints. Sue Stronge notes, ‘One of the chronograms giving the date of the completion of the tomb proclaims, “May the abode of Mumtaz Mahal be Paradise”. Her husband extended the conceit, using architectural ornamentation and the products of the imperial workshops to present his empire as an earthly paradise’.
This new style using blossoming plants and flowers was carved in stone, woven, and embroidered on textiles, painted in the borders of albums, and enamelled in gold on objects made for the court. This flowering of the Mughal aesthetic style epitomised a tolerant confluence of Islamic and Hindu traditions that invigorated each other to blend into a distinctive genre. These patterns continue to be used in Indian workshops today.
Shah Jahan’s reign ended abruptly in 1658, when he became seriously ill as his second son Aurangzeb seized the chance to take the throne. As the Mughal empire declined, so too did the patronage and production of luxury objects and the arts. Court artists and craftsmen sought work elsewhere, allowing the Mughal aesthetic to spread and influence design in foreign courts.
Mughal design, created through the continued patronage of these three emperors, has been used through the centuries in architecture, paintings, jewellery, furniture and many other objects. Mughal floral motifs are now used all over the world. And the Taj Mahal’s serene beauty still influences and affects the 7 to 8 million visitors who make a pilgrimage to ‘paradise’ each year.
Until 4 May 2025, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, vam.ac.uk. Catalogue available
